The Black File begins pulling away from the wider fleet. Volst breaks protocol. Lirae's memory loops worsen. Elias stops trusting his own footsteps. The reflections begin showing cracks — not in the glass, but in timing. Breathing. Shape. Something is looking out from the other side. And Elias feels it wants him to notice.
----
They stopped reporting in.
Volst made the call.
She sealed the comms slate with a private encryption key, then threw it into the null bin.
No more contact with Command.
No more mission logs.
No more pretending the official version made sense.
"We're ghosts," she told the team. "May as well act like it."
Bit had already vanished into the walls.
Malk started sleeping in shifts, rifle never more than a fingertip away.
Lirae disconnected herself from the subgrid and installed a manual cogitator recorder. She began transcribing all conversations by hand.
As for Elias—
He stopped sleeping entirely.
The System flagged him three times for rest deprivation.
Each time, it marked his chakra as unstable.
But the fourth time, it said nothing.
It simply turned off the sleep prompt.
> Rest Cycle: DEFERRED
> Dream Interference: Probable
> User Circadian Loop: Broken
He walked the ship at night.
Always alone.
It was on the fifth deck that he saw it again — the mirror in the old washroom.
It had been there since the ship's construction — a foggy sheet of reinforced glass bolted crookedly above a cracked basin.
He never looked at it directly.
But tonight, something pulled him.
The corridor was dim.
Pipes hissed softly overhead, leaking from poorly patched junctions. The ship's heartbeat — low and constant — thudded through the floor.
Elias stopped outside the room.
The door hung open.
Inside: the mirror.
Same as ever.
Except not.
He stepped in.
The light flickered once. Then again. Then stabilized.
He stared into the reflection.
His own face stared back.
Still. Silent.
For almost a minute, there was nothing strange about it.
Then—
The breath.
A fogged patch formed across the mirror's surface.
Right at the center.
Like someone had exhaled from behind the glass.
But Elias hadn't moved.
Hadn't breathed out.
He leaned forward, slowly. Watched his own face.
Waited.
The reflection stayed still.
But he could see it now — the delay.
Subtle.
A half-second. Maybe less.
Just enough that when he blinked, the mirrored version did it a moment later.
The System hummed.
Slow. Uneasy.
> Sync Drift Detected
> Reflection-Lag: 0.8s
> Threat Classification: Passive
> Location Marker Logged: DECK 5 – SANCTUM/W
He raised his hand.
The reflection followed.
Slow.
But slightly too fast at the end.
Like it anticipated him.
His hand paused mid-air.
And the reflection twitched.
He stepped back.
The mirror stayed the same.
But the fog on the surface—
It hadn't faded.
It grew.
Spread slowly, across the entire pane.
From the inside.
He stepped forward again.
This time, he looked not at his face, but into the edges.
Into the glass itself.
And saw it—
Just a hint.
A curve. A distortion.
Not a reflection.
A shoulder.
Not his.
Not where it should be.
He didn't breathe.
Didn't blink.
He whispered:
"I see you."
No response.
But the fog shifted.
Like something moved behind it.
He opened the journal.
Wrote quickly:
"There's someone behind the glass.
Not a reflection.
It's… watching for when I stop watching."
He closed the journal.
And that's when the mirror—
Pulsed.
Not light.
Not energy.
Just a throb, like a heartbeat across glass.
He stepped back.
The pulse stopped.
The System chimed:
> Observation Logged
> Mirror Anomaly Confirmed
> Active Response: NONE
> Self-Narrative Overlap Detected
> Recommend Distance
As he turned to leave, the lights dimmed.
Just briefly.
And the mirror surface flexed — like glass stretching under pressure.
He didn't look back.
But he didn't run.
When he returned to quarters, the journal had already been opened.
And on the next page, written in the same hand that mocked him before:
"You'll come back. You always do."
[END OF CHAPTER 8]
--------
Next up:
CHAPTER 9: The Emperor's Signal
A derelict ship in orbit begins broadcasting a signal to Elias alone. It bears a golden Imperial signature — a psychic echo of the Emperor himself. The Black File intercepts the signal and boards the vessel. But inside, Elias finds the impossible:
A reflection that speaks.